Senate THUD battle pitted Mitch McConnell against Susan Collins

The competing agendas between two of the Senate’s leading Republicans burst into the open Thursday as an almost-united GOP sank the chamber’s fiscal 2014 transportation spending bill.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the top Republican on the panel that wrote the $54 billion transportation bill, appeared to grope for an explanation for why Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) worked so hard to kill her legislation.

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Asked if McConnell’s upcoming primary fight with a tea party challenger might have something to do with the pressure, Collins told POLITICO: “I can’t speculate on why. All I can tell you is he has never worked harder against a member of his own party than he did against me today.”

Asked the same question, McConnell instead portrayed the vote as a sign of the GOP’s commitment to abide by the limits of the 2011 bipartisan deal known as the Budget Control Act. “We need to indicate we’re going to keep our word around here.”

What’s unmistakeable is that McConnell wasted few efforts to see the bill die.

As the bill was facing a crucial procedural hurdle Thursday, McConnell posted himself at the desk where senators cast their votes, eyeing each Republican as they approached to signal their preference to the clerk. McConnell also spent much of the week publicly and privately rallying rank-and-file members to vote down the bill.

“The other party was leaned on not to vote for allowing the transportation-housing bill to move forward,” she said.

A McConnell spokesman insisted there was nothing personal about the minority leader’s lobbying efforts and said he has consistently tried to curb spending. The leader even offered kind remarks about Collins on the floor.

“I want to commend the senior senator from Maine for the extraordinary amount of work she and her staff have put into this bill,” McConnell said Thursday.

Following the vote, McConnell said the “single message you ought to take out of this vote from Republicans is that we believe the bipartisan commitment we made a year and a half ago is important and we ought not to be walking away from it.”

Collins, who wrote the transportation bill with subcommittee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.), said she had gotten commitments from several Republicans that they would vote for cloture. But when it became obvious the bill would not meet the 60-vote threshold, she told them they should vote no.

That probably explains why Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) told POLITICO immediately before the vote he would support cloture, but ended up voting no. Earlier in the day, Kirk said Mikulski had addressed his concerns about the bill during a meeting on Wednesday.

“Any transportation bill is likely to over-benefit the state of Illinois because we are at the crossroads of the nation,” Kirk said.

Senate Democrats blasted McConnell and his party, and called Collins brave for holding the line against the GOP whip operation.

Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) called Collins a “profile in courage, clear-eyed, looking forward. I was so proud of her.”

He contrasted that image with McConnell, who he said was “looking over his shoulder … for Rand Paul, the libertarians, the most extreme conservatives.”

“You saw one profile in courage looking forward to lead this country … and the rest of them slinking back into the shadows,” Durbin said.

Now both parties will leave town for the August recess licking their wounds and trying to figure out how best to spin the bill’s collapse to their advantage. But when they return in September — another month that’s short on legislative days — lawmakers won’t have much time to piece together another solution.

“So where does that [failed vote] leave us?” Mikulski asked. “It says essentially, ‘Sen. Mikulski, no matter how hard you’ve worked on a bipartisan basis with both sides of the aisle and both sides of the dome for regular order, we’re not going to approve one approps bill.